Christmas 2008

We had a great Christmas this year. We spent Tuesday with my family, and had the traditional dinner spread. Everything was so yummy. It was nice to visit with everyone, too bad I forgot my camera. :( Christmas Eve we were with Rob's family, or at least those that were in town. It ended up being a small group of us. Rob's dad, his wife Rosie, her mom and Adam. We did a full Christmas dinner since everyone was going to be somewhere else Christmas day. This was the first time Rob and I hosted such a big holiday meal, and I must say that to my surprise everything turned out really well. Rob was on turkey duty, and he did a great job.

After dinner Grandpa read the story of Christ's birth. Porter of course had to cuddle up for a good story.

Then we had our traditional ornament exchange. Here's Ethan showing off his baseball ornament. He has really found the love of the game this year, and is quite good for a little guy.

The Santa spread before the boys got to it...

Ethan was pretty excited to show off his stocking stash.

Porter was fun to watch this year. He really enjoyed tearing the paper apart.

The boys both got light sabers. This was there Jedi pose...

So typical Ethan, we noticed he had his stash so neatly organized as we were opening presents.

The boys were feelin' the love after they had opened their gifts to one another.

I had the boys with me when I was shopping for Rob. Ethan spotted these Spongebob golf balls and insisted that we get them for him. Dad loved them.

I must add that my wonderful husband got me a new computer! Mine has been broken for the last month. Thank you so much babe!! I should be much more efficient in my blogging now. After we were done opening gifts we looked outside to find this...

It was breathtaking, and actually stretched all the way across the sky. It was nice to forget about the gifts we had just received and reflect on the true meaning of Christmas. The rest of the day was pretty quiet, which actually was pretty nice. We hope everyone Christmas was as enjoyable as ours.

Snow Day

The weekend before Christmas it snowed at my parents house more than I can ever remember it snowing there. I believe they had about a foot of snow.... much more than the couple of inches we got when I was a kid. The next day I took the boys up to their house for some fun. This was Porter's first time really playing in the snow, he was just a baby when we went last time. Saying they had a good time would be a major understatement! I know they had to be freezing since we don't really have proper snow clothes, but they just wanted to play in it forever. All Ethan talked about the whole drive up was that he wanted to have a snowball fight like Buddy in "Elf". As soon as we got outside I was chased around the yard by these two boys.

My mom was attacked too, I love this action shot I captured.

It wouldn't have been so bad if the boys were throwing regular sized snowballs, but the snow would come up in these enormous chunks!


I wasn't at all surprised to find my little boy that will eat anything testing out the snow.


Here's Ethan making a snow angel...


We made a snow man, Porter was so proud!

The boys found this patch of ice and told me they were "ice skating". They would dance around on the ice until they slipped, and get up and do it again. Quite funny to watch, luckily they didn't get hurt.


When we finally convinced them to go inside Grandma gave them some cinnamon rolls and made them some hot chocolate to warm them up.

We all had a great time. Mom, thanks for making it such a special day for the boys!

A new Christmas tradition

Thanks to my friend Erin, we have a new tradition in our family. She had the great idea to use an advent calender and plan a family activity everyday in December leading up to Christmas. I took the boys to Target and let them pick one out. This is the one that they finally agreed upon.

Every day the boys got to open a new door to see what we would be doing that day. They absolutely loved this, and it was really nice to focus more on our family and doing things together. Some of the things we did were:

-Watch a Christmas movie in our PJ's

-Delivered goodies to friends and neighbors

-Made this cute foam gingerbread house

-Made Christmas cards to send to our family in Costa Rica

-Went to see Christmas lights with Grandmas and Grandpas

-Made snowflakes

-Took the boys to buy gifts for each other

-Let the boys have a "campout" next to the Christmas tree

-Baked a candy cane cinnamon roll

-Disneyland...so fun during the holidays!

-Sang carols by the fire, the boys LOVE to sing Christmas songs!

-And of course we had to do a real gingerbread house!

Thanks again Erin, it's so nice to have creative friends!

Merry Christmas from the Krepps family!!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Brotherly Love

I have been trying to get Ethan excited for his new brother. Last weekend he came with me to pick up our babysitter, and I was telling him how she has all sisters and only one brother. I said to him "He probably gets lonely not having any brothers, huh?" He was quiet for a moment giving it some thought, and I thought for a second that I might have gotten through to him, when he says ever so thoughtfully, "Mom, we should give him Porter." What?!! Not quite the reaction I was hoping for! He was so sincere about it too. I guess we have some work to do before the baby comes, or he'll want to give him away too!!

Festival of Lights

Last Saturday we went to the Mission Inn and the downtown area for the "Festival of Lights". We've been doing this for the last couple of years. In the past we always went to the opening night to watch them turn them on in a grand ceremony. But this time we went the second night and I must say it was so much more enjoyable without the massive amounts of people there. Ethan and Porter were mesmerized by all the Christmas lights. Porter just kept saying "wow", it was so cute. We got some dinner at a great little cafe and had a great time showing the kids around. We will probably end up going a couple more times before Christmas since Ethan asks every night if we can go back, so if anyone wants to join us, let us know. You got to love Ethan' s face in the picture. It's near impossible to get a smile from him for pictures lately, he thinks it's so funny to pull faces or make some crazy pose.

Thankful

We spent Thanksgiving with my family this year. The food was amazing as usual, and the company was even better. I come from a family of 7 children. I am so thankful for my family and the close relationships we share. I love just hanging out with them and doing nothing. Really, we could sit around and talk for hours and laugh histerically. Here is the "adult table" with a couple of cute little girls that snuck in...

This next picture will probably only be funny to those who were there, but I had to document it. Only my sister Amy could somehow manage to get a chunk of caramel stuck in her hair while scraping it off the plate!! ( If you had sampled my grandmother's famous sticky buns, you would scrape the plate too!) Thanks for always putting a smile on my face Amy!

I think Porter enjoyed the turkey. We found him running around outside with this massive chunk of meat in his mouth!

Hangin' out with their cousins. Half the kids are missing clothes or are wet because Ethan's new favorite thing at grandma's house is her hose! :)

Bryan and Reanna, Nathan and Nicole and gang, we missed you!! Hope you can make it next year. For an even better documentation of the day, check out my sister's blog.

Christmas Time

I don't know a little boy that loves Christmas more than my Ethan. He has been asking for months when we could put up our tree. He would prefer to have it up year round if he could. Last year when we finally took it down he was mad at me for weeks, and told everyone that I "ruined Christmas". So I've been telling him that we had to wait for Thanksgiving before we could put it up. The night before Thanksgiving we decided it would be fun to put it up so we could enjoy it when we got home from all the festivities. Ethan was beyond excited when we told him we were going to decorate. Of course we had to use this to our advantage. We told him a few, "you have to ____ before we put up the tree." We got him to eat his dinner without a fight, clean up the house, and we even convinced him to let us cut his hair! Haircuts are always a huge battle for us. There were still a lot of tears, but he toughed it out. As soon as we started pulling out the boxes, he couldn't wipe the smile off his face.

Porter just wanted to take the ornaments off the tree so he could play with them.

We invited Uncle Dave to join us.

Ethan is already telling me that we need to keep the tree up "forever". Looks like I'm doomed to be the Grinch again.

It's a...

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It's another boy!! We are in shock to say the least. I had so many people telling me it was going to be a girl that I guess I started to believe them. I am a bit relieved though. At least with a boy I know what to expect. Ethan has been really funny about the whole thing. In case some of you were not aware, Ethan REALLY wanted a sister. He was in complete denial at first, this was our conversation after we found out:

Me: Ethan, mommy is going to have a boy.

Ethan: No mom, it's a girl.

Me: No Ethan, it's a boy.

Ethan: Nope, it's a girl.

So then as we are driving home he says, "Those doctors are liars. They lied to us. Tomorrow we need to come back so they can show us a picture of a girl."

He's getting a little more accustomed to the idea. Now if you ask him if it's ok that he's having another brother he'll say, "a little bit". I guess I'm getting used to the idea myself. Pray for a sweet mellow child, or it might be the end of my sanity all together. Now the name game begins. We have a horrible time coming up with boy names that we can agree on. I would love any and all suggestions, if you've heard of any great names lately. I am reserving the right to use any suggested, so don't tell me your favorite name that you are holding onto for a future child if you don't want it used.

Here's a sneak peak at our little guy...

I think he has Porter's profile, what do you think?

Ladies night

Some friends and I got out a couple weekends ago for a much needed break. We headed to the plaza and got some yummy dinner at Panera and followed it up with some frozen yogurt. Then we went over to the theater to get in line for Twilight.

We were maybe 15 people from the front of the line when the security gaurd came over to remind everyone that there were 2 different lines for the 2 theaters it was showing in. All the kids in front of us got up to get in the other line. We were quite pleased with ourselves that we ended up the first three in line so we took another picture...

Well, of course, as soon as we took the picture two girls returned to say they had left the line when this was the line they were supposed to be in after all. (You can actually see them standing behind us, waiting to deliver the bad news.) Oh well, we still had perfect seats and had a great time. Thanks Erin and Ashley for a fab evening, we need to do this more often!!

Big Brother Smarty Pants

Not wanting to be outdone by his little brother, Ethan came to me last week and said, " Mom I made a U, take a picture."

In the last week Ethan has brought me everything that looks like a letter and wants me to document it...and so the brotherly competition begins.

Creative Kid

Last night Ethan kept getting out of bed for several random reasons. At about 10pm Rob went downstairs to check on him and I heard him say, "Jenny, get the camera fast!" We both had thought he had gone to sleep so I wasn't sure what was going on. I turned to go down the hall to his room when I saw this...

We've been practicing letting the boys sleep in the same room for bedtime because when the baby comes they will be sharing a room. Last night I had to separate them for breaking the rules . When I asked him what he was doing, Ethan told me he wanted to be by Porter. He had pulled the boogie board out of the closet and made himself a nice little bed in the hallway outside of Porter's door. They really are heartbroken when they can't have their "sleepover". I wasn't too happy that he still was not asleep, but I must give him some points for creativity!!

-and yes he's wearing Santa pj's already, he's very excited for Christmas to come!!

Smarty Pants

Yesterday Porter was eating some toast for breakfast when I heard him shout, "Mom, I made an E" He was so excited and kept saying it over and over so I thought I should see what was going on. Here's what I found...

So proud...

Happy Halloween

We started our holiday early this year with our annual Music Makers Halloween Party. Music Makers is a Mommy and Me playgroup that we have been involved with since Ethan was a baby.

We met at the park for some playtime, before the festivities.

Ethan was excited to hang out with his buddy Lance.

Porter just wanted to go down the slide.

One happy boy!!

Once they did their trick-or-treating, they found a table and was ready to sit and eat it all!!

Once Ethan got a taste (no pun intended) of trick-or-treating, he was more than excited to do the real thing. Here are Dash and Buzz ready to go.

Our new ward did their trunk-or-treat on Saturday and we missed it, so we went to our old ward. It was fun to see everyone. Porter didn't understand the one piece of candy rule and just kept grabbing handfuls.

Every year people get more creative. A lot of people will make games you have to play to earn your prize, one family even gave away goldfish. Someone had set up a "bridge of terror". Think: Indiana Jones rope bridge covered in spider webs. It even had a dry ice moat underneath. It was quite the popular attraction.

The boys got way more candy than any of us need. But I think their favorite thing they got were these...